My friend.

My friend died last night.

 

That's really the weight of it. She died. She was here, we talked almost every day for a year and a half. She disappeared from all of us about a month ago, shut off communication at the news of stage 4, went into the hospital this past weekend and is now gone.

 

We sat in a virtual waiting room yesterday, waiting for news, sharing pictures, stories, laughing, crying...many of us strangers to each other, but connected by this one person. Holding hands and passing tissues and clinking glasses in salute over hundreds or thousands of miles. It was...surreal.

 

How do you mourn someone you've never physically met but were closer to than some people you've known for years? How do you forgive someone for shutting you (and most everyone else) out in the last month even though you completely 100% understand why? How do you forgive someone for leaving you when they were not supposed to, when you were both, having such very similar circumstances, supposed to beat this together?

 

I make friends neither quickly nor easily. Now I have one less here with me.

 

Sue was the inspiration behind this blog post. I ask that in her honor, you take a trip, you laugh a little louder, you try a different food, you celebrate this Halloween in an especially big way, you live a little bigger, and you make a friend out of a stranger. This is for Sue.

How Facebook has changed the process of birth and death...

Pre-cancer, I was never one to shy away from death. I wouldn't necessarily say I was morbid, but I wasn't afraid either, at least not of the concept. In another life, I think I would have loved to be some sort of forensic scientist, among many other things. I went to my first funeral when I was four, when my great Pop-Pop, whom I loved dearly, died at 92. Then again the next year when my nana died, and so on and so forth. Needless to say, I've been to many funerals over the years and am quite shocked that there seem to be many people like my husband who had been to only one funeral in his entire life before my uncle's 9 years ago. I've taken care of some severely sick people, and watched a few people close to transitioning.

 

The beginning of this post has been sitting for months. I've come back to it often but just haven't been able to attempt it. But now it seems more appropriate then ever because of the juxtaposition of the last few days.

Last night my sister-in-law posted that my niece was in labor. I woke up this morning to pictures of a beautiful healthy new baby. This is, as most would agree I'm sure, pretty much the norm these days. What you used to hear on the phone after the fact, maybe even passed through a telephone tree or god forbid, in person, is now transported in a matter of seconds with shares and likes and comments. And who doesn't want to see a new baby, know that everything went fine?

But I also woke up to a horrible, heart-wrenching post.

I have a good fb friend, one of the girls in my group. We are the same age (ok, she would emphasize that she's a year younger), we were diagnosed around the same time, same stage, same surgery, almost same treatment plan...same same same. Same smart-assedness. We would often message each other, check in on each other, commiserate and snarkily comment on the bounty of stupidity in the world...her cancer was slightly different and made a reappearance shortly after she was done with radiation, around the same time I was. We got burned together, across country from each other. She started back up on a different chemo, and get this - didn't tell her mother or her boyfriend because she didn't want to upset them. So she's been on chemo for the past year now and we were chatting the day she got her scan results back...everything was clear. Sooo happy. A couple days later I realized I hadn't heard from her and started messaging her. This went on until I asked a fellow group member if she had heard from her - she had not. After some digging we discovered she was in the hospital "having many tests done but would get back to us soon". This week we found out that she had a stroke and had mets to her spinal fluid. The doctors had given her a year. I was devastated. We kept it quiet, from our group, because we knew that's what she was requesting. Early last week, my husband found out the guy he has golfed with every week for the past 7 years or so has terminal kidney cancer. Then Robin Williams died, which was a communal sadness. Then I found out about my friend. Last week was not good.

As I said, I was devastated, and was planning something Halloween themed to send her, as we both also share a strong love of the holiday. This morning, after seeing the new baby, I saw this post - "...is in the hospital in critical condition, unresponsive, intubated, seizure activity..." I'm angry. I'm angry and sad and heartbroken. Some of her friends started a private fb page tonight so people could finally be updated on what's going on, for all intents and purposes it is a virtual waiting room, and 21st century parlour. But instead of what used to be immediate family, or close (at least in proximity) neighbors and friends, everyone who has an internet connection can "watch" someone pass. This is not the first time, I've seen it often. I've seen people, even spouses, give status updates of those dying.  I have been, at least tangentially, privy to the passing of people I don't even know. I still am unsure how I feel about this, it's something difficult to process.  I do know that I am sad. I know that I will pray, which she probably would not appreciate. I know that I will "watch", from 3000 miles away, a friend pass way way too soon. I know that no matter how technology has changed the way in which we receive or share information, it will in no way change the feeling of joy at seeing a new life or feeling of your heart breaking.  

My 39th year...

 

"Oh, Earth, you are too wonderful for anyone to realize you... Does anyone ever realize life while they live it...every, every minute? No, saints and poets maybe, they do some." - Wilder

 

I can guarantee to you that my husband...and Jack...and A-R if she could talk...and the rest of my family and friends would tell you that I am no saint. My high school creative writing teacher, Mrs. Roth, would tell you that I'm no poet. But with all respect to Mr. Wilder, although not a poetic addition (see, I know what's not poetic), I would add "and people who have or have faced life threatening illnesses or situations".

 

 

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This crazy beautiful precious life is just funny. Life truly ain't nothing but a funny funny riddle. You spend your youth voraciously coveting additional candles, longing to be older, waiting for the day that your life will "begin!!" "When I'm older I will..." starts innumerable sentences. Somewhere in your 20's, you start feeling time accelerate - not only chronologically, but also across your face, parts of your body, your hair (in my case for sure, I've been going grey since my early 20s). What only years ago was a source of pride - "I'll be 16 six months before you!!" - becomes "Ha Ha, you'll always be six months older than me!" Your 30s come and eventually parts of you start creaking and cracking and you realize holy crap, somehow I've ended up precipitously close to middle age. The music you grew up with starts to be played on "retro" weekends and classic rock stations and the band members are receiving their AARP membership applications. You find yourself going to your 20 year high school reunion, which you can't really understand because you are certain that, even though you have been married for 11 years and have two children, you KNOW you only left college about 5 years ago. But if you are healthy, all of these thoughts are accompanied by the tiny voice in the back of your mind going "but I still have soooo many years ahead, no big deal." And then something comes and smacks you in the face so hard that a punch would feel like a cotton ball, turns your world so upside down that vertigo seems like a gentle ride on a small carousel, that everything you previously knew for certain, everything you knew to be true about this world, is intrinsically forever changed.

 



People who hide their ages, are ashamed of them...I just want to shake them and say "Why can't you see? Why can't you see how very very lucky you are? Those years are family you got to love and sunsets you experienced and places you traveled and children who were able to know you." But I understand. It's truly not something that you can ever comprehend until you live it and I get that. And I mean that - I have been on both sides now - even if you have taken care of someone who has passed, even if you have lost people around you, even if you have lost a piece of your heart when they left. I have lost many people in my life. I have lost people at a young age (both them and me), I have taken care of people that I have lost, I have taken care of someone who at one time held my heart, I have lost chunks of my heart, a rather large chunk of my heart- but I didn't fully understand - I didn't fully ingest, absorb, taste, consume the complete and utter fragility of this life until I got sick. I can see the theoretical thestrals. I wish to God I couldn't, I wish I thought the carriage was still invisibly guided, but I can see them.

 

So this is what a birthday means now.

 



 It means that I had another year to practice at this crazy dance called marriage. It means that maybe to these two beings I will actually be a tangible mother, not a vague memory or scent conjured only by pictures or stories. It means I had another year to try and realize any, some, bits and pieces of my dreams and goals. It means that I have had another chance to continue in this powerful play, to contribute another verse.

 

It means that if someone says, "Oh, you'll always be older than me" I will smile and say, "Yep, isn't that great!?" It means if someone says, "Don't worry, you'll be there one day", that I will gleefully say "Yes, I will, and I can't wait!".
 

Never again will I lament the opportunities, the blessings that the passing of this time has given me. Never again will I fail to celebrate another candle, another 365 days, another 525,600 minutes.

Never again will I spend and waste time as if I had a million years.

I am 39 years old today.

Would you rather...?

Remember the game you used to play as kids, would you rather? Would you rather....kiss this boy with "cooties" or smell this hot boy's feet? Would you rather lose an arm or a leg? Would you rather run through school naked or would you rather dig through a full dumpster? Would you rather die really quickly and not get to say goodbye or know you were going to die and get to do things and say your goodbyes? It's all fun and games when it's theoretical but when it hits a little closer to home...well, you start to realize, you still don't know. I never knew the answer and I don't now. And truth be told, it is still, in essence, theoretical. I would rather live until I was 87, with a clear mind and a relatively healthy body and see my kids and grandkids. I would rather not have to think about any of this. I would rather go back to being blissfully unaware and ignorantly healthy. That's what I would rather, but that rather is gone, no matter what happens, even if I live to 87, even if all of those great things happen, my mind is tattooed with this knowledge.

The news stories the past few days, along with some new members in our facebook group, have me thinking. I know, as if I don't think enough, all the live long day. A few of us have run into (do you run into people on the internet?) girls who have metastases, and are younger, and that sucks by itself. Many of us, with a few of the girls having recurrences lately and such, are having such yo-yo days, where we are feeling great one moment and despondent the next, and so we post and ask each other what to do. And then I read the news where two hikers get lost and are found and then proceed to drive into a lake and drown an hour later. Or the newlywed who goes halfway around the world on her honeymoon to get mowed down while looking a patchouli and rasta hats at the beach. Or the guy on the motorcycle that I witnessed under the yellow blanket on Sunday while getting Jack a burger. And it really just gets replayed in my mind on a loop lately - NONE of us know what is in store for us or when - not even when some of us have already played ding dong ditch at the reaper's door, not even if he has peeked through the peephole but not opened the door yet. I don't know if that makes me feel better or worse, I guess it's just one of the mysteries of the universe that I have to come to terms with.

But with all of this going on, I just go back to a line from a TV show that hit me years ago. I loved the show "Dead Like Me". It was a one season show, and I adored it. In one of the first episodes, George has to reap the soul of a little girl,who is to die in a train crash, and she can't do it, it's unfair that such a little girl should not get to live. And Rube (Mandy Patinkin, in one of his so many many great roles) says to her something along the lines of "No, it's not fair, she should get to live, but life is not fair. But we don't make the rules, and if souls don't get reaped when they are supposed to, I have seen what happens. They wither and rot and die inside of a person. Would you condemn her to that?" And with all that has been going on around me lately, what I have seen and heard, I'm starting to truly believe that. No, life isn't fair, it's not, and that really really sucks at times. Young children should not lose their parents. Kids shouldn't die. But we don't make the rules. I don't know that I will ever understand that. Maybe I just have to live with it.